Bautista Planning and Analytics, LLC – Registered Investment Advisor

Month: April 2020

  • The Ego Is The Enemy

    In this episode, we discuss the Ryan Holiday book, “The Ego Is The Enemy” and how your ego is holding you back. 

    Full Transcript

    Hi Everyone, welcome to the You’re Daily Cup of Joe Podcast, with your host Joe Bautista. In this podcast, my goal is to give you quick lessons that you can reflect on in your journal so you can grow yourself physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually and have a better career, better relationships, and better personal finances while you enjoy your morning cup of coffee.
    I’m also the author of the book “More You Know, More You Grow: How to Get Better Every Day”. In this book, I wrote down over 30 tips to help you grow in those four cornerstones. I’m also the founder of Grow With Joe, where I combine self-development coaching and financial planning for Latino Professionals.
    At the end of today’s podcast episode, I’m going to give you a prompt question to reflect on in your journal. The idea is to take one to five minutes to reflect on today’s lesson and write a minimum of one paragraph on how you can apply the lesson in your life. You can use an actual journal, a word document like on Google Drive, or your note-taking app like Evernote. The idea is that you’re actually thinking about how to process the information to help you improve your life.
    In today’s episode, we’re are going to talk about how the ego is the enemy. There is a really good book by Ryan Holiday called The Ego Is The Enemy and I highly recommend that you read it. The ego has caused a lot of misery and pain for society and for individuals. Emperors who had big egos back in the day were crappy people to deal with because their ego was too big and they had a lot of power to do what they wanted to do. Which typically meant that other people got screwed over.
    Your ego prevents you from doing the hard work and thinks it’s okay just to talk about what is wrong and what needs to be fixed. I’m a big believer that action changes the world and there should be less talking and more doing. After reading the book, it made me respect Bill Belichick and Patriots more. In the book, Ryan Holiday writes a section called to do your job and talks about Bill Belichick’s beginnings as a coach. He first got started in the video room and would not come out of that video room until the job was done. It was boring work and no one really wanted to do it but he did. He didn’t allow his ego to get in the way. He did the job.
    That is your ego tries to prevent you from doing. It wants to say you’re better than this and you shouldn’t do the work. What will other people think about you? I remember graduating from college after spending seven years in the Marines and having to take a valet job for a short time. I didn’t like the job but I did it to fill in the gap before I found something else. It just motivated me to find something else. You just have to do what you have to do to get the job done. If you want a different job, then earn that job. But if you have to do something that you fill like you shouldn’t do, then you should do it. Don’t let the feeling of being above something keep you stuck in life. For me, it was better to be a valet driver than draining money from my bank account.
    Your ego can also cause you to do things that you really don’t want to do. How many people chase careers or stick with careers that they don’t really like but they enjoy the status it brings? A lot of people do. I remember working in the White House as an intern for four months and I was looking around the place and I told myself that I couldn’t work in a place like this. The hours are long, the pay sucks, it’s stressful, and occasionally you get to do something cool. Now that I’m out of the White House, I don’t care if I ever get invited back because it’s not for me. I remember sitting in meetings with folks from outside organizations and was wondering why we were having this meeting. I felt like people wanted to have a meeting in the White House just to say they had a meeting in the White House and that doesn’t sit well with me. I felt it was more ego-driven than coming from the heart. So this is another way that the ego causes harm.
    The ego just wants to do less work and have more attention and stuff, which it didn’t deserve. And if everyone let their ego take over, then the world would be a much worst place. Thank god, for the most part, we have to cooperate in this world so the ego has to stay in check.
    What is in important in this world is just being a person of value. How can you provide the people that you’re interacting with the most benefit so they can turn around to other people and deliver the same thing? You do this by doing purposeful work, learning how to do better every day, doing the work, and being a good person to the best of your ability. This requires a lot more work and to have higher standards, which the ego doesn’t like. The ego wants it easy but easy doesn’t last. It can give you temporary relief but something will happen that causes that relief to go into chaos. I’ll do the hard work now so that I don’t have bigger problems down the road.
    That’s it for today’s episode, to summarize it, the ego is the enemy. So if you want to prevent a lot of pain down the road, learn how to keep your ego in check so you can do your job as a person. It requires more work to check in the ego in check and you might feel like a fool initially, but it will create a solid foundation for you in the future. If you let the ego take over, the foundation of your life with being shaky and more likely to crumble. I don’t want a volatile life and you shouldn’t, so don’t let the ego take over. If you want to get a link for this book, just go to the show notes at growwithjoe.me/episode220 and I’ll have a link to the book.
    So in your journal, ask yourself, is there something you should do but you feel like it’s beneath you? If you do that thing, what is the worst thing that going to happen? If you do this less prestigious thing, will it give you a short cut to a greater thing down the road? You only have one life to live, might as well make sure you’re doing what you really want to do and not let your ego drive the wheel because you’ll most likely end a place that you don’t want to be in.
    Thanks for listening today! To get a free copy of my book “More You Know, More You Grow: How to get better every day” just go to my website growwithjoe.me/book and just pay for shipping and handling.
    I have a quiz on my website that grades your inner circle, so if you want to find out if your inner circle is an A, B, C, D, or F, you can take that quiz at growwithjoe.me/quiz
    I’m also trying to do a feedback Friday episode, so if you have a question that you would like to have my answer on the air, just e-mail me at friday@growwithjoe.me
    I’m also on Instagram at Grow With Joe and Facebook just look up Grow With Joe
    If you’re on iTunes, don’t forget to give me a five-star rating if you liked this episode and hit the subscribe button as well.
    The greatest compliment you can give me is to share this episode with someone else.
    Thanks for joining me today and remember if you go with Joe, you can grow with Joe, cause Joe knows Dough.
    *Music outro

  • Flexibility Is The Key To Stability

    In this episode, we discuss how being flexible can help you in a lot of areas of your life. 

    Full Transcript

    Hi Everyone, welcome to the You’re Daily Cup of Joe Podcast, with your host Joe Bautista. In this podcast, my goal is to give you quick lessons that you can reflect on in your journal so you can grow yourself physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually and have a better career, better relationships, and better personal finances while you enjoy your morning cup of coffee.
    I’m also the author of the book “More You Know, More You Grow: How to Get Better Every Day”. In this book, I wrote down over 30 tips to help you grow in those four cornerstones. I’m also the founder of Grow With Joe, where I combine self-development coaching and financial planning for Latino Professionals.
    At the end of today’s podcast episode, I’m going to give you a prompt question to reflect on in your journal. The idea is to take one to five minutes to reflect on today’s lesson and write a minimum of one paragraph on how you can apply the lesson in your life. You can use an actual journal, a word document like on Google Drive, or your note-taking app like Evernote. The idea is that you’re actually thinking about how to process the information to help you improve your life.
    In today’s episode, we’re are going to talk about how flexibility is the key to stability like the great John Wooden has said. If you’re always stiff in your approach and allow no flexibility, then there is going to come to a point where you’re going to break. One major event that has the force of an earthquake is going to cause everything in your life to crumble down. You have the flexibility to handle those type of events but you also have to be strong enough where people are not knocking you down.
    If you look at a sport like Basketball, if you come into the game with a game plan, and after the first quarter, everything is not working, it might be wise to have some flexibility in your game and try running some other defensive scheme and offensive plays. Otherwise, you’re just going to lose the game badly. Sometimes you just need to continue with the game plan until things click. This will only come from wisdom.
    When it comes to my life, I try not to hold on to something longer than I have to. I don’t hold on to beliefs, values, and other things if they don’t serve a purpose for me. This is how I maintain stability in my life. One of the hard things I had to do last year was to leave Washington, DC to go move back with my parents. I wanted to start my own financial planning firm and I knew I needed to keep my expenses low. At 33 years old, it’s not a good feeling to go live with your parents, but it was fine. I got to see my parents a lot and I was able to help them out.
    But if I stayed adamant about not living with my parents, then it would have taken twice as long to start everything with Grow With Joe. I would have to get another job and that would limit my time working on this Grow With Joe business. I needed to have flexibility with the way I accepted my standard of living. It gave me more stability with my life now. Now I’m in Mexico City, following my dream six months earlier. I thought I wasn’t going to be living in Latin America until March of 2020 but I was able to make here by October 2019.
    When it comes to relationships, you have to be flexible or another way to say it is compromised. You can’t have everything go your way if you want to have a happy relationship. There is going to be some give and take. And don’t expect things to be 50-50. Some days will be 80% you do all the work and there will be some days where you’re only giving 20%. This is the flexibility that you should seek in your relationships and will help you have the stability to maintain a long term relationship. When you start keeping score, then that’s when resentment starts to happen. You do something and then you expect something in value come in return, but then it doesn’t come because you didn’t say anything. This is when you start to lose stability in the relationship as well. There is are tons of ways to lose stability in a relationship, and it comes from too rigid in your ways.
    But you have to realize that sometimes, you shouldn’t have flexibility in your values and principles because it will cause you to dip into mediocrity. So you just need to have the wisdom to know where you should be flexible and when you shouldn’t. Since I was living with my parents, I try to make sure to make them feel happy I was there since technically I was living under their roof and not paying rent. I felt I had no flexibility because they were being generous to me. So when you’re flexible in one way, it can cause you to be inflexible in another way. Just make sure you’re okay with this trade-off.
    With life, things won’t do exactly as you plan, it will always take longer and be more expensive. The keys thing is that you’re just flexibility and let the problems slide off of you instead of sticking to you. If you can do this, then you’re going to be fine in life. You’re going to accomplish more in life because you moved on with your life and not stuck in the same spot. I only give myself five minutes to dwell on a problem before I move on. I’m more successful with this than not because I expect these things to happen and just part of life, so I just need to be flexible. I don’t control the world, but I can control my life and having this semper gumby mindset of always being flexible just helps me have control over my life.

    That’s it for today’s episode, to summarize it, you want to be stubborn on your vision, flexible on the details. This will give you the stability you need to help you reach your goals. You might have one plan but then five minutes into the game plan, something unexpected happens and you need to change everything up or you just need to shake off the initial shock and continue with the game plan. You just need to build up your wisdom to know which one you should choose. If you can’t be flexible, then problems will stick to you and who wants to have problems sticking to them. I don’t want that and I’m just going to work on my goals and relationships and be flexible when I need to and to be stubborn when the time calls for it. This will help me live my life, and I don’t want anything else.
    So in your journal, ask yourself, where do you need to be more flexible in your life? Where do you need to be more stubborn? This is a balance, and the type of person you want to be in life will determine the balance at that specific moment. Just remember that it will never be a 50-50 balance and the percentages will change. Then make sure you stick to the balance and if it doesn’t work, then try something else.
    Thanks for listening today! To get a free copy of my book “More You Know, More You Grow: How to get better every day” just go to my website growwithjoe.me/book and just pay for shipping and handling.
    I have a quiz on my website that grades your inner circle, so if you want to find out if your inner circle is an A, B, C, D, or F, you can take that quiz at growwithjoe.me/quiz
    I’m also trying to do a feedback Friday episode, so if you have a question that you would like to have my answer on the air, just e-mail me at friday@growwithjoe.me
    I’m also on Instagram at Grow With Joe and Facebook just look up Grow With Joe
    If you’re on iTunes, don’t forget to give me a five-star rating if you liked this episode and hit the subscribe button as well.
    The greatest compliment you can give me is to share this episode with someone else.
    Thanks for joining me today and remember if you go with Joe, you can grow with Joe, cause Joe knows Dough.

  • I Am Always Doing Things I Can’t Do

    In this episode, we discuss how you should do things that you can’t do, that’s how you get to eventually do them. 

    Full Transcript

    Hi Everyone, welcome to the You’re Daily Cup of Joe Podcast, with your host Joe Bautista. In this podcast, my goal is to give you quick lessons that you can reflect on in your journal so you can grow yourself physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually and have a better career, better relationships, and better personal finances while you enjoy your morning cup of coffee.
    I’m also the author of the book “More You Know, More You Grow: How to Get Better Every Day”. In this book, I wrote down over 30 tips to help you grow in those four cornerstones. I’m also the founder of Grow With Joe, where I combine self-development coaching and financial planning for Latino Professionals.
    At the end of today’s podcast episode, I’m going to give you a prompt question to reflect on in your journal. The idea is to take one to five minutes to reflect on today’s lesson and write a minimum of one paragraph on how you can apply the lesson in your life. You can use an actual journal, a word document like on Google Drive, or your note-taking app like Evernote. The idea is that you’re actually thinking about how to process the information to help you improve your life.
    In today’s episode, we’re are going to talk about the Pablo Picasso quote, “I am always doing things I can’t do. That is how I get to do them.” What this quote means to me is that we should try things that we want to do but know that we’re not good at them yet. This how you eventually get good at the thing. During Pablo Picasso’s life, he creates around 50,000 pieces of art. From paintings, ceramics, sculptures, drawings, and prints. If you make 50,000 pieces of something, you’re probably going to get a lot better.
    I saw this thing on Reddit where this person took a drawing that they did 10 years ago, and then redid the photo using their skills ten years later and the ten-year photo ten years later is amazing. So much more detail and skill is shown. I have a niece who’s been drawing since she was a little kid and now as a teenager, she is winning Google Doodle contest for her state. Just practice and practice some more and you will get better.
    In Marine Corps Boot Camp, I sucked at the front somersaults and I put off on doing MCMAP for a while until I went to Iraq and I had nothing better to do than to learn MCMAP and eventually after enough attempts, I was able to perform them. Once I was able to do a front somersault, which gave me a lot of confidence.
    At first, you suck at something and at that point you have a decision, do you try again or do you quit. If you quit, you save your ego some embarrassment, but what you sacrifice is your growth as a person. I also hate to use language that tells me that I can’t do something. I will also not use language that will put me down. I might say that I messed up but then I tell myself that this is how I’m going to get better the next time around.
    When I was first doing this podcast, it was so hard to do because it would take me forever to edit the podcast. And I didn’t want to record the podcast because I knew I wasn’t that very good. But thanks to reading books like the Art of War and listening to podcasts like Marketing Secrets, now I don’t have any trouble recording a podcast.
    I still mess up when I record but they are not as bad as in the past, which means I just finish my podcasts faster. Now I’m doing more video work where I’m doing Facebook lives and I noticed that I would do certain things with my face that I know want to try to control. Like when I noticed that I’m accumulating saliva in my mouth, I tend to take a big gulp. Or when I’m thinking, I look away from the camera.
    I’m just going to keep doing the videos and get better at them. That’s how I’m going to do them better in the future. Plus don’t see anything like the final attempt at doing something, you will get better with time. I remember talking to someone who did some internet stalking about me and she said that I was a different person in real life. She saw that I did all these videos and was expecting someone else. I’m more of an introvert by nature and will allow other people to talk. But I was surprised when this person told me that. I guess I’m moving in the right direction and maybe I’m just overthinking things and people aren’t noticing everything I’m doing wrong.
    So that’s another point I’m making is that we tend to make things bigger than expected. I read this one study where kids had to wear this t-shirt with I think a big picture of Barry Manilow on it and had to show up to a class late in college. Then they interviewed the classmates after the class and asked if they noticed anything weird happen and student with a huge picture of Barry Manilow on their chest and most said no. The study called this the spotlight effect since as people we tend to put the spotlight on our self and not see what is happening around us. So next time you do something, and you want to get better at it, don’t worry looking like a fool, because no one is really paying attention. The beginning is a perfect time to perfect your skills at trying the new thing in your life.
    That’s it for today’s episode, to summarize it, you should do things that you can’t do because that’s how you will eventually do them. Especially if this means you will become the person that you want to become in life. The ego of the human mind has killed a lot of dreams because it wants to protect itself from feeling bad or looking like a fool. This was helpful back in the day when we lived in small tribes, but it’s not helpful anymore. I suck at new things that I try but then I just keep doing them until I get better. This happened with dancing, doing podcasts, doing videos, and even doing financial planning. The key thing is repetition and if you do something a hundred times, there is a high probability that you will get better at it. You just got to put in the repetition in and not let your mind tell you that you can’t do something or others to. Just get to work and start living your life.
    So in your journal, ask yourself, what is something that you want to do? What is causing the resistance from doing that thing? What is the worst thing that is going to happen if you try that thing ten times? What are you giving up by not doing that thing? Take some time and write your paragraphs and then just reflect on it. Hopefully, it helps you move in the right direction. Like for me, if I don’t spend time doing this podcast and my Facebook Live videos, then I won’t have a successful financial planning business and then I will have to go back to having a 9-5 job and I don’t want that. What don’t you want in your life whereby doing this thing, you ensure that won’t happen?
    Thanks for listening today! To get a free copy of my book “More You Know, More You Grow: How to get better every day” just go to my website growwithjoe.me/book and just pay for shipping and handling.
    I have a quiz on my website that grades your inner circle, so if you want to find out if your inner circle is an A, B, C, D, or F, you can take that quiz at growwithjoe.me/quiz
    I’m also trying to do a feedback Friday episode, so if you have a question that you would like to have my answer on the air, just e-mail me at friday@growwithjoe.me
    I’m also on Instagram at Grow With Joe and Facebook just look up Grow With Joe
    If you’re on iTunes, don’t forget to give me a five-star rating if you liked this episode.
    Thanks for joining me today and remember if you go with Joe, you can grow with Joe, cause Joe knows Dough.
    *Music outro

  • All Life Is An Experiment

    In this episode, we discuss how we need to do more experiments with our lives. 

    Full Transcript

    Hi Everyone, welcome to the You’re Daily Cup of Joe Podcast, with your host Joe Bautista. In this podcast, my goal is to give you quick lessons that you can reflect on in your journal so you can grow yourself physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually and have a better career, better relationships, and better personal finances while you enjoy your morning cup of coffee.
    I’m also the author of the book “More You Know, More You Grow: How to Get Better Every Day”. In this book, I wrote down over 30 tips to help you grow in those four cornerstones. I’m also the founder of Grow With Joe, where I combine self-development coaching and financial planning for Latino Professionals.
    At the end of today’s podcast episode, I’m going to give you a prompt question to reflect on in your journal. The idea is to take one to five minutes to reflect on today’s lesson and write a minimum of one paragraph on how you can apply the lesson in your life. You can use an actual journal, a word document like on Google Drive, or your note-taking app like Evernote. The idea is that you’re actually thinking about how to process the information to help you improve your life.
    In today’s episode, we’re are going to talk about the Ralph Waldo Emerson quote, “All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.” I’ve said this before, and I will continue to say it, the more experiments you can make in your life, the better you’re life can get. This depends on what type of life you want, but you should also add some variety to your life. It’s like those parents who said you couldn’t have a dog growing up, but when you’re an adult and have your own dog, they treat your dog like they are the best thing.
    That parent could have had a great time in the past but they didn’t experiment with their life. When my life, I’m always trying to experiment. With my reading, I try to make every fifth or sixth book something that I’m not that interested in but would be helpful to do know. This year I read a book about female orgasms to try to understand the female body. I heard about the book on a podcast and I told myself, that if I’m going to be in a relationship with another female, I should at least know somethings on how the female body works.
    There is another book about birth control and how it affects the female body that I’m interested in reading and it’s in my to-read list. I already downloaded the sample on Kindle.
    If I just kept reading the same business books and self-help books, then there comes a point where I’m not learning that much. Instead of getting something from the entire book, now I’m only getting something from 5% of the book. That 5% might be very valuable but there are diminishing returns on doing the same thing over and over again.
    By adding something new, then you might be able to create this new breakthrough. I want to start reading thriller books for my next fiction book because I feel like I can learn a lot from writers who know how to keep the attention of the reader and I can apply that style to my Grow With Joe Business. I’m just going to keep experimenting with the book I read because I know something good will eventually happen.
    Since I started my own business, I’ve bought three different marketing courses and I learned a ton from all those courses on how to set up Facebook ads, creating a landing page, setting up my email automation sequence, and how to write copy for those ads. Now I’m experimenting with different ads to see how I can generate more leads for my company.
    Right now I’m running a federal student loan analysis report that is targeting Latino doctors, lawyers, and federal employees. From my experience, these are folks that have a lot of student loans and need help with them. I created three different ads so that I’m targeting each group specifically and I wouldn’t have known to do this if I didn’t take those courses. Now it’s just requiring me to experiment to see how to improve my ads, which would increase my conversion rate.
    I’m in the business of selling financial planning and coaching to Latino clients, and I need to experiment with my marketing to see how I can reach more of these folks. I already did all the financial planning stuff for the most part and the developing coaching, now it time to experiment with marketing.
    I see that there can be a lot more opportunities for myself if I can make this thing work. I know I would be stuck as a business owner if I didn’t take these courses in the past. Right now, I’m in Mexico City trying to learn Spanish and I can’t just have coffees with folks and go to networking events in order to generate business. I have to get good at digital marketing.
    So when you experiment, you’re also opening up new opportunities for yourself and this important in the new economy because things are constantly changing. This means that old opportunities that used to work, don’t work anymore. And if you don’t add different tools to your toolbox, then you’re not going to be able to keep up with those changes. I feel like this was fine in the old days, but now it’s different. The new economy requires us to constantly improve ourselves and normal doesn’t cut it anymore. So experiment with your life so that you can live a great life and don’t become stuck in life. And you don’t want to become stuck in life because that’s where misery is and you don’t want to be neighbors with misery.
    That’s it for today’s episode, to summarize it, all life is an experiment. The more experiment you make the better. So make sure that you’re trying new things in your life. This will ensure that you increase the likelihood that you’re doing what actually makes you happy. How are you supposed to know the things you don’t know yet? You find out by trying a lot of different things. Plus when you experiment, you’re setting yourself up for more opportunities in this world because now you have more tools to draw from in a situation. If you’re the only one with an ax and everyone has a screwdriver, you’ll be able to cut down a tree a lot faster than someone with a screwdriver. I’ve been experimenting with my life a lot since I left high school and I love the life I have right now and it wouldn’t be possible if I didn’t experiment. So start trying new things and keep an open mind. It just might be the thing to transform your life.
    So in your journal, ask yourself, what is an experiment that you need to implement in your life? Do you need to ask your boss to work on a different project? Do you need to take a course that will improve your skills? Not all experiments will work out but if you keep trying something will eventually workout. If you’re afraid of the experiment, what is it about that experiment that scares you? Then ask yourself what are you giving up by not doing that experiment? Hopefully, you discover something new for yourself, and if you don’t, then just keep trying.
    Thanks for listening today! To get a free copy of my book “More You Know, More You Grow: How to get better every day” just go to my website growwithjoe.me/book and just pay for shipping and handling.
    I have a quiz on my website that grades your inner circle, so if you want to find out if your inner circle is an A, B, C, D, or F, you can take that quiz at growwithjoe.me/quiz
    I’m also trying to do a feedback Friday episode, so if you have a question that you would like to have my answer on the air, just e-mail me at friday@growwithjoe.me
    I’m also on Instagram at Grow With Joe and Facebook just look up Grow With Joe
    If you’re on iTunes, don’t forget to give me a five-star rating if you liked this episode.
    Thanks for joining me today and remember if you go with Joe, you can grow with Joe, cause Joe knows Dough.
    *Music outro

  • Tomorrow Is When The Weak Become Strong ,You’re Not Weak

    In this episode, we discuss how not to procrastinate and become the person you were meant to be. 

    Full Transcript

    Hi Everyone, welcome to the You’re Daily Cup of Joe Podcast, with your host Joe Bautista. In this podcast, my goal is to give you quick lessons that you can reflect on in your journal so you can grow yourself physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually and have a better career, better relationships, and better personal finances while you enjoy your morning cup of coffee.
    I’m also the author of the book “More You Know, More You Grow: How to Get Better Every Day”. In this book, I wrote down over 30 tips to help you grow in those four cornerstones. I’m also the founder of Grow With Joe, where I combine self-development coaching and financial planning for Latino Professionals.
    At the end of today’s podcast episode, I’m going to give you a prompt question to reflect on in your journal. The idea is to take one to five minutes to reflect on today’s lesson and write a minimum of one paragraph on how you can apply the lesson in your life life. You can use an actual journal, a word document like on Google Drive, or your note-taking app like Evernote. The idea is that you’re actually thinking about how to process the information to help you improve your life.
    In today’s episode, we’re are going to talk about how tomorrow is when the weak become strong and you’re not weak. This is a quote from Og Mandino and the book, the greatest salesman in the world. In the book, there is a chapter about not procrastinating and acting now. The full quote goes like this.
    For now, is all I have. Tomorrow is the day reserved for the labor of the lazy. I am not lazy. Tomorrow is the day when the evil becomes good. I am not evil. Tomorrow is the day when the weak become strong. I am not weak. Tomorrow is the day when the failure will succeed. I am not a failure. I will act now.
    When I first heard this quote I was in shock. When you start to analyze what Mandino was writing, it’s very true that you don’t want to associate yourself with negative things and this will help you get over your procrastination. How many times have we said we won’t do something because it doesn’t fit our values. This could before good habits or bad habits. Once you identify with something, then you’re more likely to do things that will fit that identify. When you start to say tomorrow is reserved for the labor of the lazy. I’m not lazy. Or Tomorrow is the day when the weak become strong. I am not weak. Then you will stop second-guessing yourself if you should do something. You’re either that person or you’re not.
    One of the things that helped me with writing, podcasting, and running my own business. Is that I tell other people and myself that I am a writer, I am a podcaster, and I’m a business owner. So then I’m going to do things that are going to fit that identity and start taking action. I earned the title of the US Marine and I feel like I have to maintain a certain physique so that I keep the standards of the United States Marine Corps. I’m 33 years old now and I feel great and it’s because I take care of my body. But I take care of my body because of my identity as a Marine.
    So looking at my day, a lot of what I do is based on who you identify with. So if you identify yourself as average and worthy of less, then this is what you’re going to get. It’s going to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. To be the person that you’re meant to be, you need to be taking action. As a writer, I write. As a podcaster, I make podcast episodes, as a business owner, I made decisions that are going to help me with my business. I sucked at everything in the beginning, but with enough time, I got better. Plus it’s better to suck at the beginning when no one knows who you are and work your way up the ladder than to start at the top of the ladder with no experience. If you start at the top, you’re probably going to fail. Even if you do fail, you can get back up and start climbing again.
    To get better physically, mentally, spiritually, and emotionally, which is going to help you with your career, your relationships, and your personal finances. It requires you to take specific action to help you get better in those areas. But if you want to stay weak in that area, you will either start tomorrow, next week, next year, or next decade. I’ve written tons and I’ve produced a lot of podcast episodes, and I’m going to keep doing what I need to do to grow with the business. I know who I want to be in the future and it’s going to require me to act now on things that need to get done. It goes back to when is the best time to plant a tree? 20 years ago but the next best time is now. If you want that better future it starts with acting like that person today.
    That’s it for today’s episode, to summarize it, tomorrow is when the weak become strong, and you’re not weak. Tomorrow is an easy thing to say when you don’t want to do the uncomfortable things that will generate a better future for yourself. But if you wait to feel like you’re ready, then it’s never going to come. It is always better to act to feel than to feel to act. Once you start doing the activity, then you will start to identify with that activity. I’ve pretty much written 1500 words every day for the past 10 months and now I highly associate with being a writer. Now that I’m taking my MBA, writing is easy. I just took my final where we had to write essay questions for five different topics and it was such a breeze for me and I like to contribute my success to writing every day. Do the activities that you’re supposed to do every day, and you will just stay strong and not become weak.
    So in your journal, ask yourself, who do you need to identify as? What activities does that person do? When today, can you start doing those activities? Yeah, take some time to figure out who you need to be, and then start acting like that person. You’ll be amazed who you will be a year from now. I know I love myself so much more now than the person I was six years ago and that’s because I’m acting like who I am supposed to be.
    Thanks for listening today! To get a free copy of my book “More You Know, More You Grow: How to get better every day” just go to my website growwithjoe.me/book and just pay for shipping and handling.
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